EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq

by Susan Lindauer

  O’MEARA: “No. As I said, I never knew Paul to have a nine-to-five job or – I knew that he tinkered with voice recognition. But I didn’t ever really – I was never told that he was getting paid for that, or it was a job. It was something he kind of tinkered with.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “So you never came to find out that Mr. Hoven acted as a press agent for ABC News, is that right?”

  O’MEARA: “While I knew Paul? Never.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “And that he did freelance press work for 60 Minutes?”

  O’MEARA: “That was before I met Paul. That was years before. He did a Panama story and got sick [with a heart virus]. He told me about that. I never knew Paul to do any press work while I knew him.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “OK. Now, Paul Hoven never told you, did he? That he ever worked for the CIA?”

  O’MEARA: “No.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “He never told you that he worked for the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, correct?”

  O’MEARA: “That’s correct. I mean nobody comes out and says they’re a spook.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “If I could set your time frame from 1999 to 2003, OK? Are you with me?”

  O’MEARA: “Yes.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you know where you were working at about approximately during those years?”

  O’MEARA: “1999 to 2003, I was at the Washington Times.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “How often during ‘99 and 2003 would you speak with Paul Hoven?”

  O’MEARA: “All the time. I mean, Paul and I were friends. I considered Paul a friend.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “As a friend, approximately how many times a month do you think you would talk to him?”

  O’MEARA: “At least once a week.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “This was generally telephone conversations?”

  O’MEARA: “Sometimes we went out to dinner.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “Now, during those years, 1999 to 2003, did Paul Hoven ever discuss with you Susan Lindauer?”

  O’MEARA: “I’m sure he did.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you recall any specific times that Paul Hoven discussed Susan Lindauer?”

  O’MEARA: “Paul talked about Susan all the time.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “I’m specifically asking you from 1999 to 2003. Did Paul Hoven’s discussion about Susan Lindauer diminish in comparison to the early to mid 1990s?”

  O’MEARA: “No. I would say it was more.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “During the times that you did speak with Susan Lindauer, did you ever get the impression that she was exaggerating her base of information, with respect to what she was talking about? In the 1990s. Whenever you spoke to Susan, did you have a sense that she was exaggerating her role?”

  O’MEARA: “No.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “Have you ever had concerns about Ms. Lindauer’s mental health?”

  O’MEARA: “No.”

  O’CALLAGHAN: “Do you think you’re qualified to express any opinion about her mental health?”

  THE COURT: “Are you able to answer the question, as it’s phrased, ma’am?”

  O’MEARA: I think I’m qualified insomuch as I can, you know, read the DSM [diagnostic symptoms manual] just like any psychiatrist, and look at a list of behaviors.”

  O’MEARA: “As somebody who knows Susan for many, many years, not as a good friend, but as an acquaintance at meetings, at the Hunan, and from hearing about her from Paul, I never got a sense in all that time that Susan was mentally unstable.”

  On redirect with Shaughnessy, for the Defense:

  SHAUGHNESSY: “With respect to Mr. Hoven, this fellow who maybe met you “a couple of times,” approximately how many times did you meet with him from, let’s say the mid ‘90s to the present?”

  O’MEARA: “I haven’t seen him in a couple of years since he went back to Minnesota, but Paul was a regular fixture in my life. I considered him a close friend. He had dinner at my family’s homes many, many times. I mean, I met with Paul a lot.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Just a moment. Where does your family live?”

  O’MEARA: “In northern Virginia.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Would he come over to dinner at your family’s house?”

  O’MEARA: “Yes.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “About how many times?”

  O’MEARA: “Well, he was very welcome at my sister’s home. He used to love – he thought it was from Better Homes and Gardens. He went swimming in the pool there. He was you know, he was part of my life. He was a good friend. I considered him a very good friend. And we met often for dinner, talked on the phone all the time.”

  “In fact, Paul threatened a reporter one day for being rude to me when I was on the Hill. He called me, and told me. I told him I would kill him if he ever did that again. I mean Paul. We were very close friends.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “So when he says he maybe met you a couple of times –”

  O’MEARA: “He’s lying.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Have you recently had brought to your attention, writings or matters that relate Paul to the intelligence community?”

  O’MEARA: “Yes. I started doing some research on Google, and Paul is very evident in a blog. I actually printed out his responses. They are on my chair over there. He’s responding to other people asking questions about other spooks, or other intelligence-type people like Gene Wheaton [one of the key figures who exposed Oliver North and the Iran-Contra Scandal] and Ed Wilson [a covert CIA operative who served 27 years in prison for running a black operation in Libya].”

  “Paul is going into some explanation about some of these people. How Paul knew them, and so forth and so on.”

  “Paul also introduced me to Bill Weisenberger and Alice Weisenberger. And Bill is former CIA [heavily engaged with Ed Wilson in former CIA operations involving Libya]. I used to go shooting with Paul at Bill’s farm. Paul would take me there, shooting guns.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Paul Hoven?”

  O’MEARA: “Paul Hoven took me there. We used to call them Big Bill and Alice. And we would go to dinner a lot with Big Bill and his wife, Alice.”

  “So, I mean, is it in the realm that Paul knew people in intelligence? Yes. Certainly Bill Weisenberger was in the CIA, and it’s written about all over Google. You can read it. I mean, he doesn’t deny that he was in the CIA.”

  From the defendant’s chair, I let out a long sigh. A deep breath that I’d been holding inside me for four years, anticipating this moment.

  Did Paul Hoven have deep affiliations inside the murky world of intelligence?

  Gracious, yes!

  And did he have strong ties with me? For many years?

  Indisputably.

  Imagine that moment for me, as the “accused Iraqi agent.” For four years, I had begged and pleaded for this one simple pre-trial evidentiary hearing, so that independent sources like Kelly O’Meara could authenticate these relationships. All of my requests got denied.

  Instead, I had been incarcerated for one year in prison on a Texas military base. Scorned as “incompetent.” Threatened with needle injections of Haldol to “cure me” of believing the truth of my own life. I had to listen to crazy psychiatrists argue as to whether my relationship with Hoven and Dr. Fuisz existed at all.

  At one point at Carswell, the psych crowd speculated that these men might not be real people! Maybe I invented them!

  It got that crazy!

  The difference was that now I had a superior attorney who wanted to defend me. That’s what changed the dynamic of my legal battle. One attorney’s determination to advocate for the rights of his client.

  The outcome was a stunning reversal. From the opening moments of Kelly O’Meara’s testimony, all that speculative conjecture of the psychological evaluations crashed down in the Courtroom. Like a demolition, it collapsed in minutes flat.

  Psychiatry failed the reality test.

  Consider the irony— Psychiatry had sworn that Courts have no need for participatory witnesses. The “medical insight” of psychiatry
was sufficient to know the “truth” about my activities and relationships. Participatory witnesses would be superfluous and confusing.

  Except the lunatic psychiatrists got it all wrong.

  That single morning of testimony proved psychiatry had been vainglorious and empty of insight exactly as I told Judge Mukasey two years earlier, when I pleaded against forcible drugging. The “diagnosis” had been fraudulent and devoid of reality contact.

  Sadly, for the first time, Shaughnessy and I confronted hard evidence that some of Hoven’s statements to the FBI must have been dishonest— like telling the FBI that Hoven only met Kelly O’Meara “a couple of times,” when they were incredibly close friends for 20 years. Hoven was a close friend of mine for 9 years.

  One has to wonder if Hoven scrubbed O’Meara from his life just like he scrubbed me. He no longer needed us anymore. So he obliterated us both, erasing all the warm memories and exciting adventures that we shared together.

  O’Meara and I are baffled by it.

  But those who watch the intelligence community should recognize familiar patterns in his behavior. Just like Joe Harvey dumped O’Meara after four years of close contact, once his responsibility as her handler finished, so Hoven cut me off, too. We were used up as sources. He moved on.

  Intelligence watchers would also recognize the familiarity of the lifestyle. Intelligence folk frequently appear to have no formal occupation. Dr. Fuisz used to joke that there would be “no business cards” at his meetings. Another joke around Washington is that neighbors can identify the spooks next door, according to who’s mowing the lawn or heading to the beach on a glorious Tuesday afternoon, when everybody else is tied down at an office.

  My neighbors gossiped about me, too. It’s part and parcel of the culture.

  Hoven would often hide behind his heart disease and disability retirement to avoid questions about his employment. In truth, his heart ailment never interfered with supervising my contacts with Libya and Iraq. He was my handler, and both of us stayed active and busy.

  And I could never forget that Hoven showed up at my door knowing I warned the Tunisian Embassy about the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

  My closest friends and family were completely ignorant of that extraordinary event. Yet Hoven had been fully debriefed in all particulars. At the beginning of our relationship, he frequently berated me that we would have no contact at all, on account of the wild differences in our political perspectives, except for the government’s desire to keep an eye on me after that attack.

  Yes, he called me “goofy.” Hoven was a hard right conservative, who attended “Soldier of Fortune” soirees in Washington. I was a progressive democrat and peace activist. We were an odd couple, for sure. We had very different motivations for doing this work. And yet Hoven was one of my closest friends for a decade. I called him my “big brother.” I described Richard Fuisz as “my uncle.” I loved these men, and I considered it a privilege to share adventures with them. I had the best life I could have hoped for.

  Sometimes I have wondered if perhaps Hoven and Dr. Fuisz wrongly imagined that I complained to these crazy psychiatrists about our past. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I spoke very highly about our relationships.

  And what about his link to the Defense Intelligence Agency, as a double blind? Hoven was adamant that our projects in New York broke no laws against CIA operations or surveillance inside the United States. He always stipulated that Defense Intelligence had authorization from Congress to run domestic counter-terrorism operations. Hoven portrayed his ability to liaison with Defense Intelligence as critical for the legitimacy of our work in New York. Though officially retired on disability, Hoven always insisted that our team’s actions were entirely legal, because he kept Defense Intelligence in the loop. That was a big deal.

  At trial, other witnesses like Ian Ferguson, a Scottish journalist and investigator for the Lockerbie Appeals, would testify that other Intelligence officers identified Hoven as the Defense Intelligence liaison for Lockerbie. And it was true.

  When it came to identifying fellow travelers and spooks that I might encounter on my path, Hoven said it best.

  “Susan, if it waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

  “But Paul!” I’d say. “How can I be sure?”

  “Susan,” he’d say, laughing. “It’s a duck.”

  After four years waiting for my day in Court, I heard O’Meara’s testimony with a satisfied heart. We had one shot before trial at proving the authenticity of my relationship with Hoven and his wide intelligence contacts.

  O’Meara knocked it out of the ball park.

  But my defense wasn’t finished yet. Shaughnessy was determined to validate our team’s 9/11 warning, as well. We intended to prove the FBI, the U.S Attorneys Office and the Bureau of Prisons had always known the truth throughout the debate on forcible drugging, while I was locked up at Carswell and M.C.C.

  That would force the question of prosecutorial misconduct out in the open. It would also keep open the question of whether Hoven lied, as O’Callaghan argued most adamantly to Judge Preska. We could not be sure if O’Callaghan was relying on Hoven’s absence from the courtroom to mislead the proceedings again. That remained a distinct possibility, given all that had come before.

  Either way, validating my 9/11 warning would prove O’Callaghan told a terrible lie to Judge Mukasey, when he denied the independent confirmation of my team’s warnings during the awful debate on forcible drugging. That deception officially made my story one of the most savage government cover ups in the last decade—

  Again, my Defense chose wisely.

  Parke Godfrey is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at York University in Toronto, Canada’s third largest university. A scientist and mathematician, who does calculus algorithms for fun, like a game, Godfrey presents a calm, studied demeanor. He’s a precise and methodical thinker who chooses his words carefully. During difficult court questioning, he would pause to give an accurate, thoughtful response.

  The two of us had become close friends in 1990, while Godfrey worked on his PhD in artificial intelligence and deductive databases at the University of Maryland in College Park. He has taught at York University since 1999, with a two year sabbatical at William and Mary College in Virginia.609

  Godfrey and I met through an old friend from Smith College, my alma mater in Northampton, Massachusetts, shortly after I arrived in Washington.

  SHAUGHNESSY: “With what frequency did you see Susan?”

  GODFREY: “Until I moved to Toronto in ‘99, I probably saw Susan on an average of twice a week. I probably spoke with her on an average of two to three times a week.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “So you came to know her pretty well, is that correct?

  GODFREY: “Yes.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Now, were you aware that she was concerned with, perhaps, antiwar activity and peace-type activity?”

  GODFREY: “Yes. I was.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Did she speak with you about certain activities that she had become aware of, that is, certain dangers that she believed were facing us?”

  GODFREY: “She did, yes.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Would you please describe them?”

  GODFREY: “The first way I found that she was quite an antiwar activist is probably early on. We and other friends went to a number of the demonstrations that were happening in the early ‘90s downtown. The marches and such.”

  “One, if I’m remembering correctly, was an antiwar rally during the Gulf War, and a couple of others were rallies for abortion rights.”

  “Then, in the mid 90s, I was aware that she was involved in a number of things that she described as peace activism. She also did quite a bit of extracurricular activity and traveling to New York to talk with different groups, in particular, always, with a very keen interest in Middle Eastern problems.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Did there come a time when she was concerned about a possible at
tack on the United States?”

  GODFREY: “She had described that.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “What did she describe?”

  GODFREY: “In particular, she warned me when I was job hunting and considering potential work in New York, because I liked New York City, that New York City was dangerous, and in particular she was predicting that there was going to be a massive attack here. In particular in southern Manhattan. This was before 9/11.”

  “So when I was looking for the job at William and Mary, which was late 2000 – I was at York University, but was looking at other universities – she warned [me] not to consider New York because she thought an attack was imminent here.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Continue, please.”

  GODFREY: “I asked her about the nature of it. She said that she thought it would be something very, very big. I asked her, “Well, what do you mean?” She said that it would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon. She said that what was started in ‘93, she thought was going to come back.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “What was that she referenced as having started in ‘93?”

  GODFREY: “Well, the attempt on the World Trade Centers at the time.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Did she believe, or was she telling you that very shortly there was likely to be another attack of that nature?”

  GODFREY: “She did. She said that it would complete the cycle of that attack. And she said that there would be an attack in late summer, early fall.”

  “In August, she told me that she thought it was some time imminent.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “Now, did you know any of the things that she was doing that might have given her access to information, that might lead to a prediction of that nature?”

  GODFREY: “Well, I had known that she was active in trying to prevent escalation with what turned out to be the war in Iraq. She had been making trips to New York to talk to people there. But nothing in my mind ever connected that she would have any access to information or intelligence that would give any indication of an attack.”

  SHAUGHNESSY: “You said she was visiting New York periodically. Do you know who, not necessarily the names, but the nature of the people she visited in New York City?”